All forums/threads/posts from Eidos Forums have been imported on the new forums, and Eidos Forums is now closed for new posts. Please navigate to the new forums to continue discussions there.

To find the new location of an imported Eidos Forums thread or post on the new forums, use this tool.
For information on regaining access to your Eidos Forums account on the new forums, see this thread.

Thief PC: It's not a port and gamers will love it, says producer
Eidos Montreal producer Stephane Roy also assures fans that PC version will have all the options you can imagine, but not Mantle at launch.

Originally Posted by Freyja
I've contacted the person in charge of distribution, who said some Asian countries are managed by another branch of Square Enix and that it's entirely possible that preorders are just not open in those areas of the world yet. Preorders are a big deal in the US, but they're less of a common practice in other territories.

So, as far as we can tell, it's not a permanent region block, just a matter of time before it shows up in Steam for your country.

December 2013

Quote:

Eidos Montreal's Thief Remake Devs Want 1080p and 60FPS for Next-Gen Consoles, but Not at Sacrifice of Physics

Since Thief is set to be the first big project from the company in 2014, the developer is aiming to boost the game with the highest resolution and frame rates possible.

Lead level designer Daniel Windfeld-Schmidt was recently in an interview with Gamingbolt where he discussed the upcoming stealth title from the company, while also revealing details about the game’s frame rates and resolution that’s intended for it.

Additionally, Windfeld-Schmidt was also asked if it was difficult to match the earlier appeal of the Thief series when the team decided to expand on the gameplay with new technology offered via next generation consoles. He stated:

“When revisiting an existing license there are always things to be aware of and treat with respect and the studio are approaching the Thief franchise in the same way we did with Deus Ex; taking a lot of time studying what made the original games so interesting and then working out what we need to do to ensure the essence of those games is intact.”

“For example the light and dark mechanics, the bow, the arrowheads and so on all have to remain – plus they’re cool to use so it’s an easy choice. We also kept the fact that you can complete Thief without knocking anyone out or killing anyone. You still have that choice; that is an essential in what makes a Thief game. It’ focus is on stealing,” he added.

“We didn’t fall into the temptation to force players to shoot anyone or to do anything in that direction. We want to make sure that stand alone experience that Thief was in the original series is still what retained in Thief.”

Thief is currently scheduled for releases on PC, PlayStation 4 & PlayStation 3, and Xbox One & Xbox 360 on February 25, 2014.

Thief Developer Q&A: PS4, DualShock 4 Secrets Revealed
With the power of shadows at his beck and call, master thief Garrett returns to PS3 and PS4 in 2014 with a new bag of tricks. The well-loved stealth series has always empowered gamers with a broad array of in-game choices, whether it was using lethal or nonlethal tactics to drop nosy guards, or leveraging magic and technology to overcome adversity. The upcoming Thief is no exception.

In order to learn more about Thief’s stealth systems, storytelling, and PS4 benefits, we turned to Producer Stephane Roy. He shared some incredible insight into Thief’s design process, and even sheds new light on how DualShock 4 will empower PS4 thieves.

How much can the pre-alpha version be improved and 'tweaked for purists' from present state

Quote:

Originally Posted by b1skit

Don't worry, EM has a strong history with current gen development stemming from both DXHR, The Missing Link and Tomb Raider - this will be another feather in the teams cap. The real extra work will fall on Stephane and the management teams shoulders - lots of spreadsheets and checklists to be made for sure

Coding and scripting is all done in the same language, then exported and compiled for each platform. So aside from configuring the build tools, it's minimal extra workload there. Same goes for the art assets - while some textures/models will need to be down-res'd to fit the current gen memory limits, the exact same base assets are used to create the final versions regardless of the end platform - so again, quite minimal extra workload there as well. As far as testing/QA, Eidos-Montreal hosts Square Enix's largest QA department in the company - these guys handle almost all testing and QA work for all Square Enix titles, right here, in house. There is plenty of bandwidth on that team to ensure we can deliver the quality Thief deserves

Quote:

Originally Posted by b1skit

Hey guys,

We've just shared a new EM Community video - special announcement edition via the Eidos-Montreal Community Blog - Check it out here!

'Thief' will receive "a lot of love" on PC, says Eidos Montreal

Quote:

Game director Nic Cantin said that while all versions of the title will offer the same features, on PC it will be "unique" due to its controls.
The Xbox One and PlayStation 4 [will be similar] because it's console, but honestly for the PC version, it's unique," he told Digital Spy.

"The control and this franchise is really a PC product, so we're going to give a lot of love to the PC version also.

"It's not true that PC and consoles are the same thing. Again, just for the control, for example. We have to make sure we really work specifically on that. That said, for the features and stuff like that, yes, it's the same game."

Cantin recently said that Xbox One's Kinect and the PS4 touch pad will be used in the game.

SUNNYVALE, Calif. —6/11/2013
AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced exclusive collaboration with Square Enix to optimize “THIEF™” for the Graphics Core Next architecture in select AMD Radeon™ graphics processors, as well as the x86 and graphics architectures featured in AMD A-Series APUs. Developed in conjunction with the AMD Gaming Evolved program, "THIEF" will extensively leverage the advanced capabilities of AMD Radeon™ graphics processors, including AMD Eyefinity multi-display technology for panoramic gaming, AMD CrossFire™ multi-GPU technology for supreme performance, and state-of-the-art DirectX® 11 rendering for pristine image quality.

“The 'THIEF' franchise has a storied history that we are proud to join in this latest installment,” said Matt Skynner, corporate vice president and general manager, Graphics Business Unit, AMD. “We are even more pleased to work so closely with their development team to realize the vision for these games with the incredible gaming performance of a PC powered by AMD Radeon™ graphics. And as the exclusive hardware partner for 'THIEF,' we continue to demonstrate that the best experience for gamers and developers lives at AMD with the Gaming Evolved program.”

It is confirmed Eidos Montreal is using a highly modified version of UNREAL ENGINE 3 for Thief
Thief will be available in 2014 for PC, PlayStation®4, and other next-generation consoles.

___________

In my mind, Thief 3 was almost completely ruined by being developed multiplatform, it massively dumbed down the 3rd installment for the console users and I think I'm right in saying that a decent portion of the PC fans were quite dissapointed.

If you want a role model for Thief 4 then look no further than Thief 2, the developers of the original 2 games made a bold statement, no elements of the game were sacraficed in order to give the game a mass market appeal.

So here's my list of complaints with Thief 3 in no real particular order

Arrow trails, bright shiney arrow trails that were left behind, the sort of thing you expect coming out the back of a sword in a manga movie, great for futuristic japanese cartoons, bad for steampunk medievil.

Removal of rope arrows, and subsequently the sort of puzzles that required them...thats a major facepalm right there.

Loading parts in level, the PC version had them and didn't need them, neither the originals had loading zones and Thief 2 in particular had some city sized maps, the restrictions of the consoles were brought to the PC once again. They could have at least made them a door or something like that, but they put these stupid looking blue swirly clouds all over the place, again just "in your face" obnoxious.

Glinting loot, apparantly console players can't find loot on their own like you had to in the originals, it has to have a massive glint on it to show you what was valuable and made it easier to find in the dark.

Easy lock picking, it looked good at first but while theres analogue movement around the circle the only sweet spots are at the N,S,E,W positions, so you just tap WASD quickly to find it and click, you could pick even the hardest locks in a second. Locks in the originals reuqired fiddling between sets of lock picks and had a minimum time delay to pick, this was great tension building if you had to be in the light to pick the lock and there was patrols about, you'd be bouncing up and down in your chair shouting "c'mooooon" at the screen afraid a guard would spot you and blow all your hard work.

Movement was god awful, it was clearly built a 3rd person game and 1st person view was an afterthought it seems, it was awkward as your body rotated in strange ways making movement in 1st person extremely irritating.

The back to the wall feature cheapened the game, it made you practically impossible to spot in even mildly dark areas, it was a sort of failsafe that always worked, no need to plan ahead and monitor guard routes, and time everything well, just pop out of the shadows and if a guard comes hug the wall and safe as houses, just lame.

You'll see most of these isues stem from cross platform development, the restrictions of the hardware in the console versions made for a reduction in level sizes without loading zones. The average skill in a first person environment by the average console player with a gamepad was no where close to being agile enough to control Garrett from Thief1&2 so 3rd person was added to allow you to cheat a look around corners, the wall hug was added to make hiding easy, rope arrows that required a great amount of 3D orientation were removed.

Basically the tone of the whole game for 1&2 was that you were an elite thief, the best of the best who could sneak in and steal everything and leave without a single guard being alerted, and it even spawned the idea of "ghosting" from the fans where this was a made up condition to beat the level.

I don't have problems with consoles getting their own Thief game, and I dont have problems with it being toned down in the skill section, and the graphics section in order to be viable for the platform.

Please just PLEASE, I beg you, keep that seperate from the PC version, build 2 entirely seperate games if that is what is required to keep the design for the PC to the quality of the originals, I am a massive fan of the series and Thief 2 is overall my top1 game even to this day, I love everything about the games and really want to see the quality of Thief 2 come back driven with modern technology, but fear we'll just have another Thief 3

Take a look at Yahtzees review of the series here - http://www.escapistmagazine.com/vide...e-Dark-Project He gives Thief 1 and 2 praise and slays Thief 3, I emplore you to pay attention to this feedback early in development and make the adjustments now to please both crowds, otherwise you'll destroy the franchise on the PC.

P.S While we're on the subject of consolitis can we make sure that a multiplatform developed title has proper PC screen aspect ratio support (4:3, 5:3 and 16:10) for the resolutions, proper widescreen support - that is to say widescreen is added Horizontal width and not minus vertical height (pay attention to www.widescreengaimgforum.com if you need to learn how to do it correctly), no mouse acceleration or at least let us disable mouse acceleration. A proper Field of View angle, it should be approx 90 degrees for 4:3 and 103 degrees for 16:10, again see WSGF, these are ALL typical problems with games developed for the consoles as well as the PC and can all easily be avoided.

Last edited by Viktoria; 02-27-2014 at 03:28 AM.
Reason: next gen update

Very damn well said! You actually pointed out the annoying things that haven't appeared here yet, this post should be stickied until the release of the game to remind the devs what not to include. All the stuff and so much more made me not wanna play T3 again, whereas i'm playing t1 and t2 FM's all the time. Makes you think, right?

Well for them to make two completely separate games is unrealistic, unfortunately. Everything else I pretty much agree with.

You know what else is unrealistic? Creating an online platform the ties together every one of your company's games, expanding that into a market for selling said games, creating free downloadable content for them, and then adding games from other developers.

Err, I mean Steam. Everyone absolutely loves Valve because of things like this and their devotion to quality above all else. Taking that 'unrealistic' viewpoint that creates extraordinary results.

Or you could look at splinter cell: double agent. One version for the last gen consoles, and one for the current gen and PC. Two separate games is not an unrealistic proposition, and if the combined that with an awesome PC version Eidos will be on the path towards gamer love and massive profits.

Movement was god awful, it was clearly built a 3rd person game and 1st person view was an afterthought it seems, it was awkward as your body rotated in strange ways making movement in 1st person extremely irritating.

This was what killed it for me. The movement mechanics and the engine ruined everything that was so good in Thief 1 and 2.

You know what else is unrealistic? Creating an online platform the ties together every one of your company's games, expanding that into a market for selling said games, creating free downloadable content for them, and then adding games from other developers.

Err, I mean Steam. Everyone absolutely loves Valve because of things like this and their devotion to quality above all us. Taking that 'unrealistic' viewpoint that creates extraordinary results.

Or you could look at splinter cell: double agent. One version for the last gen consoles, and one for the current gen and PC. Two separate games is not an unrealistic proposition, and if the combined that with an awesome PC version Eidos will be on the path towards gamer love and massive profits.

Second to Valve, that is

You speak gibberish. Steam is one of the worst things to happen in the last few years.

OP - very well said! While I still consider DS a good game, it indeed suffered from consolitis.
Build Thief 4 as a PC GAME - then dumb down the console versions if you so desire. Take advantage of the possibilities PC provides, stop this "the game is the same across all platforms" nonsense - if something can't be done on consoles, implement it in the PC version instead of throwing it out the window completely.

To the OP: I summarized it in another thread, but in short you want immersion breaking elements removed.

I had no clue the player mechanics were built around third person in Thief DS, but now that I think about it, that makes sense. It was a very unpleasant feeling to be moving, bobbing around like I was hitting every pothole on Route 66.

It's obviously going to be multiplatform for PC, xbox 360, and ps3. I have faith that they will be able to successful develop the game multiplatformed. The technology of both the xbox360 and ps3 should be able to handle whatever engine Thief IV uses. Obviously PC will have better textures and resolutions but the next-gen consoles are powerful enough to handle whatever Eidos Montreal can throw at them.

The purpose of this message is not to say consoles are superior to PC's, and I do not want to start some strange fanboy upset. I acknowledge and understand that PC's are capable of more when it comes to video games. All of that prior stuff being said, I would like to make a casual observation.

When Thief: Deadly Shadows was released, it was released for PC and Xbox systems. The Xbox had already been out for years and pushed to its graphical maximum. The Xbox was not a great system, only a starting point to something better. Thief: Deadly Shadows was created near the end of Xbox and relatively close to the beginning of the Xbox 360. Literally, Thief: Deadly shadows came out one year before the release of the Xbox 360. The hardware in Xbox had not been upgraded since 2001, which means that three years of PC improvements had passed and the Xbox stood still. Naturally, Thief: Deadly Shadows was garbage on the Xbox and the PC version showed signs of the crummy console counterpart. I see your complaint, and I agree with it for the most part.

When it comes to the Xbox 360, you have some of the most graphically impressive titles to grace the gaming world. No, we have not seen Crysis on consoles, but we have seen Gears of War 2 and Call of Duty 4, both of which are amazing games. The Xbox was utterly incapable of creating an immersive experience due to its graphical limitations. The Xbox360 does not have this problem. I understand that the Xbox360 has been out for 4 years, which means PC's have improved that much, and the Xbox360 has not. We could potentially have the same problem we did with Thief: Deadly Shadows. I would argue that the Xbox360 is not graphically limited to the point where it will dampen your PC gameplay experience. The Xbox360 is a phenomenal piece of hardware (when it works).

The developers would actually make more money and a better game by hacking off you PC people and doing a straight console game that is well developed, such as Gears of War 2, and port the game over to you all later with graphical improvements. The market for the Xbox360 is much better than your market. People, including myself, prefer to play games on their 60" plasma televisions with 7.1 surround sound and 1080i.

Just because you think that you have to hack off "skillz" or whatever because PC's are more capable, does not mean that the PC is superior. The market rates superiority on accessibility, and the Xbox360 is a much more accessible platform. Just because we don't have a keyboard, does not mean that we don't have the ability to play at the same level as you. If you have not played a great FPS on the Xbox360 yet, I tell you it is a must. They are not limited in 3D ability. Puzzle-solving is the same. You would be silly to think that the PC is more capable of providing a 3D world in the sense of "using rope arrows to solve puzzles." I do agree the PC could provide larger worlds with less loading, but like I said, this does not mean that the masses will like it more.

I hope you understand that Eidos would be wise to make a straight console game that ports over to you all later. The Xbox360 has hardware capable of alleviating all of the complaints you listed above.

Good luck flaming me. I know that this is somehow going to be offensive to some of you. But remember what I said at the beginning, I acknowledge the PC is a better machine than a console. I am just remarking on the fact that consoles are not as limited now as they once were, and that companies will make more money if they develop straight console games that can be ported to PC gamers later on.

Many games are ported for consoles. Due to the lack of control and many other limits on consoles I feel many games are striped down heavily in overall quality just to be playable on consoles.. like xbox360,PS3 etc.. On the computer with mouse and keyboard the game have so much more possibilities, on console with a bad controller-pad everything gets crippled down. So many things that are possible with mouse + keyboard are not possible with gamepad and everything have to be crippled down so a player on gamepad can play.

The way levels start, menus are created, settings, movement and level design, effects and content in game have to be crippled just to fit consoles lower standards.. and the worst thing is the slow loading times everywhere in consoles.. please spare us from this.

Many great games have been ruined this way.
Please dont let consoles cripple all possibilities, ignore consoles and only make the game for PC so the game can be the best possible.

In my mind, Thief 3 was almost completely ruined by being developed multiplatform, it massively dumbed down the 3rd installment for the console users and I think I'm right in saying that a decent portion of the PC fans were quite dissapointed.

If you want a role model for Thief 4 then look no further than Thief 2, the developers of the original 2 games made a bold statement, no elements of the game were sacraficed in order to give the game a mass market appeal.

So here's my list of complaints with Thief 3 in no real particular order

Arrow trails, bright shiney arrow trails that were left behind, the sort of thing you expect coming out the back of a sword in a manga movie, great for futuristic japanese cartoons, bad for steampunk medievil.

Removal of rope arrows, and subsequently the sort of puzzles that required them...thats a major facepalm right there.

Loading parts in level, the PC version had them and didn't need them, neither the originals had loading zones and Thief 2 in particular had some city sized maps, the restrictions of the consoles were brought to the PC once again. They could have at least made them a door or something like that, but they put these stupid looking blue swirly clouds all over the place, again just "in your face" obnoxious.

Glinting loot, apparantly console players can't find loot on their own like you had to in the originals, it has to have a massive glint on it to show you what was valuable and made it easier to find in the dark.

Easy lock picking, it looked good at first but while theres analogue movement around the circle the only sweet spots are at the N,S,E,W positions, so you just tap WASD quickly to find it and click, you could pick even the hardest locks in a second. Locks in the originals reuqired fiddling between sets of lock picks and had a minimum time delay to pick, this was great tension building if you had to be in the light to pick the lock and there was patrols about, you'd be bouncing up and down in your chair shouting "c'mooooon" at the screen afraid a guard would spot you and blow all your hard work.

Movement was god awful, it was clearly built a 3rd person game and 1st person view was an afterthought it seems, it was awkward as your body rotated in strange ways making movement in 1st person extremely irritating.

The back to the wall feature cheapened the game, it made you practically impossible to spot in even mildly dark areas, it was a sort of failsafe that always worked, no need to plan ahead and monitor guard routes, and time everything well, just pop out of the shadows and if a guard comes hug the wall and safe as houses, just lame.

You'll see most of these isues stem from cross platform development, the restrictions of the hardware in the console versions made for a reduction in level sizes without loading zones. The average skill in a first person environment by the average console player with a gamepad was no where close to being agile enough to control Garrett from Thief1&2 so 3rd person was added to allow you to cheat a look around corners, the wall hug was added to make hiding easy, rope arrows that required a great amount of 3D orientation were removed.

Basically the tone of the whole game for 1&2 was that you were an elite thief, the best of the best who could sneak in and steal everything and leave without a single guard being alerted, and it even spawned the idea of "ghosting" from the fans where this was a made up condition to beat the level.

I don't have problems with consoles getting their own Thief game, and I dont have problems with it being toned down in the skill section, and the graphics section in order to be viable for the platform.

Please just PLEASE, I beg you, keep that seperate from the PC version, build 2 entirely seperate games if that is what is required to keep the design for the PC to the quality of the originals, I am a massive fan of the series and Thief 2 is overall my top1 game even to this day, I love everything about the games and really want to see the quality of Thief 2 come back driven with modern technology, but fear we'll just have another Thief 3

Take a look at Yahtzees review of the series here - http://www.escapistmagazine.com/vide...e-Dark-Project He gives Thief 1 and 2 praise and slays Thief 3, I emplore you to pay attention to this feedback early in development and make the adjustments now to please both crowds, otherwise you'll destroy the franchise on the PC.

P.S While we're on the subject of consolitis can we make sure that a multiplatform developed title has proper PC screen aspect ratio support (4:3, 5:3 and 16:10) for the resolutions, proper widescreen support - that is to say widescreen is added Horizontal width and not minus vertical height (pay attention to www.widescreengaimgforum.com if you need to learn how to do it correctly), no mouse acceleration or at least let us disable mouse acceleration. A proper Field of View angle, it should be approx 90 degrees for 4:3 and 103 degrees for 16:10, again see WSGF, these are ALL typical problems with games developed for the consoles as well as the PC and can all easily be avoided.

I agree in just about everything although I have only played Thief 3 for pc I still consider it one of the best games ever.
I love the shalebridge cradle (please get the guy who designed that in the team! although I guess it's impossible now that he's working on bioshock 2 for 2K Marin )
And most of all I love the city and all the sounds in the game in an incredible way, it really adds a layer of detail and immersion that few games have.
Please keep doing cartoons for the cutscenes!
Don't care for 3d person as long as you have a solid movement system
Graphics must be top notch but it will be nothing without good art direction (and sound XD), remember that!

I hope you understand that Eidos would be wise to make a straight console game that ports over to you all later. The Xbox360 has hardware capable of alleviating all of the complaints you listed above.

I think you are right on when it comes to todays console hardware being far more capable that the contemporary systems available when TDS was released.

I only take issue with the comment above.

EM would be far better off creating a worthy Thief game for the PC--maximizing that platform--and then porting to the consoles, scaling it down as necessary. This path, IMO, would result in the best possible game on all platforms, which is what we all want.

I think you are right on when it comes to todays console hardware being far more capable that the contemporary systems available when TDS was released.

I only take issue with the comment above.

EM would be far better off creating a worthy Thief game for the PC--maximizing that platform--and then porting to the consoles, scaling it down as necessary. This path, IMO, would result in the best possible game on all platforms, which is what we all want.

I appreciate your feedback. I just think that they would make more money doing the console version first and then using profits from that to develop an amazing PC game loaded with "extras." I would buy both versions.

so true... doubt they'll do that though...
hay at least wait to release the pc version even if you finish the console versions first because it negatively affects sales and views of the pc version which should be the ultimate version.

so true... doubt they'll do that though...
hay at least wait to release the pc version even if you finish the console versions first because it negatively affects sales and views of the pc version which should be the ultimate version.

I mean pc sales. I don't care about consoles, but if they release it for consoles first, no one will know of the awesomeness of the pc version because they wouldn't give it a second chance if they didn't like it on console. A unified release will also put it under the limelight more

Just because we don't have a keyboard, does not mean that we don't have the ability to play at the same level as you.
.

The reason console players can play same levels as people with keyboard and mouse is because the whole games have to be crippled down for consoles to be even playable with a controller. If you play a lots of computer games and a lot of console games you will notice its so much easier to move and control things with mouse and keyboard, its so much more accurate and fast.
You will also notice menus,settings and pop-up screens in games barley exist in console games, because they are annoying and difficult to interact with with a controller and with most and keyboard u don't even mind them.
A simple thing like picking up an item in your inventory, dropping it on your character is a pain in the a** on the console but no problem at all on PC. Already here a lot of possibilities are lost. Try the game "two worlds" for example..

Everything in the game that has to do with movements,clicks and accuracy has to be reduced as much as possible in console games mostly due to the lack of a good controller that can do the same amazing stuff as mouse and keyboard.
And even though lots of stuff are removed the most simple thing takes a lot more time to do on a console the the PC, everything you do takes more time on a console witch make you as a game feel crippled.

It does not matter how much you train with a controller you will never be as good and fast as a average guy on mouse and keyboard. Therefor games are crippled down very much so a 14 year old kid still can play the games on his xbox360 and without having to learn to use a controller like a keyboard. As much menus and elements in the games that involve, fast and accurate movement, clicking, turning/looking around etc.. has to be reduced and removed as much as possible or else the game would not be playable with a controller.

More and more automatic stuff have to be added, auto aim, stuff you could do by yourself are automated instead etc..

When you play this crippled games on a computer you feel sorry, you will feel a lack of quality and opportunities that other computer games have.

And if you want to play games on you 60" plasma with 7.1 sound, just plug it in to your computer.

Arrow trails, bright shiney arrow trails that were left behind, the sort of thing you expect coming out the back of a sword in a manga movie, great for futuristic japanese cartoons, bad for steampunk medievil.

I can almost garuntee that this would have been in DS if it were a PC exclusive. I recall developer diaries on it being stumbled upon as a side effect of creating realistic player shadows and they decided to impliment it. Nothing to do with the console market.

Quote:

Removal of rope arrows, and subsequently the sort of puzzles that required them...thats a major facepalm right there.

Rope arrows were certainly a loss, but they stemmed from the animation involved fromt he visual player model, not because console gamers can't understand a rope tied to an arrow.

Quote:

Loading parts in level, the PC version had them and didn't need them, neither the originals had loading zones and Thief 2 in particular had some city sized maps, the restrictions of the consoles were brought to the PC once again. They could have at least made them a door or something like that, but they put these stupid looking blue swirly clouds all over the place, again just "in your face" obnoxious.

This is the only part of your arguement that might have had an effect from console limitations. But at the same time I may also doubt that. Games like Splinter Cell Chaos Theory had huge environments that put Deadly Shadows' to shame, and it saw an amazing console release.

As for the blue swirling mystical smoke of transportation, that falls under bad art direction again.

Quote:

Glinting loot, apparantly console players can't find loot on their own like you had to in the originals, it has to have a massive glint on it to show you what was valuable and made it easier to find in the dark.

Now you're just assuming console gamers are idiots, and that's not only false, but also terribly arrogant and insulting of you. You paint the picture of a player with the mentality of a 4 year old who needs bright shiney stimuli to keep his attention.

This is a bad art direction scenario. Next one.

Quote:

Easy lock picking, it looked good at first but while theres analogue movement around the circle the only sweet spots are at the N,S,E,W positions, so you just tap WASD quickly to find it and click, you could pick even the hardest locks in a second. Locks in the originals reuqired fiddling between sets of lock picks and had a minimum time delay to pick, this was great tension building if you had to be in the light to pick the lock and there was patrols about, you'd be bouncing up and down in your chair shouting "c'mooooon" at the screen afraid a guard would spot you and blow all your hard work.

Coming up with a lockpicking system is admirable on Ion Storm's part, considering the original two games had a "point, click, repeat" approach that wasn't all that deep. Was it the best version of a lockpick system I've ever seen? No. But atleast they tried something.

Quote:

Movement was god awful, it was clearly built a 3rd person game and 1st person view was an afterthought it seems, it was awkward as your body rotated in strange ways making movement in 1st person extremely irritating.

Yes, movement was awkward becaus eof 3rd person, but I already described how 3rd person was not the fault of "consoletards" as you seem to paint it.

Quote:

The back to the wall feature cheapened the game, it made you practically impossible to spot in even mildly dark areas, it was a sort of failsafe that always worked, no need to plan ahead and monitor guard routes, and time everything well, just pop out of the shadows and if a guard comes hug the wall and safe as houses, just lame.

You know, I have yet to see a bullet point of yours that can be blamed on these mythical "Dumb Consolites" that you spin fables of. This one is no different. Most of the ills you've listed were the fault of Ion Storm's misplaced faith in their game engine from Deus Ex, even though it proved to be very jerky and taxing. They also made very poor choices on gameplay and visual design, being very seperated from the fanbase, unlike LGS. Then again, Ion Storm isn't known for their great judgement *Cough*Daikatana*Cough*.

Blaming the console demographic has always been a scapegoat that has painted the PC gamer as a very arrogant prick. Being someone who partakes in ever gaming platform of this generation, including PC and handhelds, I know for a fact that console gamers aren't idiots. Unfortunately, there's considerable percentage of PC gamers who act like they are superior simply because they use a mouse and keyboard.

I don't blame devs and publishers for following the money, I just wish console users were more demanding in terms of gameplay. Consolitis is far more deadly than swine flu, its why there have been so few truly great games this decade.

[*]The back to the wall feature cheapened the game, it made you practically impossible to spot in even mildly dark areas, it was a sort of failsafe that always worked, no need to plan ahead and monitor guard routes, and time everything well, just pop out of the shadows and if a guard comes hug the wall and safe as houses, just lame.
[

I disagree.
All they have to do is rework the AI to be less dumb and know how to really look for the player, and react decently.
Backing yourself up against a wall is a common movement for someone who's trying to avoid being seen (ie: movies, and other games)
Have you played that recent game Velvet Assassin? It doesn't have the back to the wall thingie, and it's one of the reasons it sucks.
.